Popular attitudes to memory, the body, and social identity : the rise of external commemoration in Britain, Ireland, and New England

A comparative analysis of samples of external memorials from burial grounds in Britain, Ireland and New England reveals a widespread pattern of change in monument style and content, and exponential growth in the number of permanent memorials from the 18th century onwards. Although manifested in regionally distinctive styles on which most academic attention has so far been directed, the expansion reflects global changes in social relationships and concepts of memory and the body. An archaeological perspective reveals the importance of external memorials in articulating these changing attitudes in a world of increasing material consumption

Place, Space and Memory in the Old Jewish East End of London: an Archaeological Biography of Sandys Row Synagogue, Spitalfields and its Wider Context

Sandys Row (London E1) is the only functioning Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jewish) Synagogue in Spitalfields and the oldest still functioning Ashkenazi synagogue in London. Located in an area, which from the mid­late nineteenth century until WWII was the centre of London’s Jewish population, it is one of the last surviving witnesses to a once vibrant and dynamic heritage that has now virtually disappeared. This area has been the first port of call for refugees for centuries, starting with French Protestant Huguenots in the eighteenth century, then Jews fleeing economic hardship and pogroms in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century followed by Bangladeshi Muslims in the twentieth century. Using a broadly archaeological analysis based very closely on the sort of practice widely used in church archaeology, the authors argue that much can be inferred about wider social and cultural patterns from a study of architectural space at Sandys Row and its associated material culture. This is the first such archaeological study undertaken of a synagogue in Britain and offers a new perspective on wider issues regarding the archaeological definition of religious practice and religious material culture

Materiality and memory: An archaeological perspective on the popular adoption of linear time in Britain

Archaeologists increasingly realise that prehistoric peoples had their own ideas about time. The concept of linear, measurable time emerged in learned Europe largely in the first millennium. Here the author tracks how, with the broadening of literacy in sixteenth-century Britain, dates start appearing on numerous items of popular culture. The dated objects in turn feed back into the way that people of all social levels began to see themselves and their place in history

Local traditions in early eighteenth-century commemoration : the headstone memorials from Balrothery, Co. Dublin, and their place in the evolution of Irish and British commemorative practice

This paper describes and analyses the early eighteenth-century headstones from Balrothery and other nearby graveyards in northern County Dublin with regard to size, shape, decoration and textual content. A distinct local design repertoire is evident. The texts display age and gender biases in commemoration, with older adults and males dominating. The Balrothery headstones are compared with others from Ireland and Britain, and a phase of marking burial with small stones is identified that predates the gravestone boom occurring from the middle of the eighteenth century. These early burial markers are relatively small compared with later eighteenth-century memorials, but a trend towards erecting larger stones over time is discernible. Most commemorate the deceased, some others emphasise location of the body, and a few explicitly indicate plot ownership